Anthony Joshua Through Age 31 > Lennox Lewis Through Age 31.

[sicko]

Anthony Joshua through age 31 has accomplished more than Lennox Lewis through age 31.

OK if that makes you feel good keep running with that but again the Lack of Knowledge when it comes to History shows. Lennox ERA was much tougher than AJ's current ERA as well...again GOOGLE, go look back who was in Lennox ERA and who was Champions while he was working his way up 1995-1997 it was Champions like Rid**** Bowe (by the way who ducked Lennox) and Evander Holyfield...it wasn't any Charles Martin type of Champions back then in that ERA. Take it from someone who was actually WATCHING Boxing even Back Then!

[DaNeutral.]

Well the haters can hate and choose to pretend he is irrelevant or hasnt achieved or proven anything but FACTS are FACTS.

They say he is manufactured but he sits on top of the division. They say he hasn't faced the top 2 yet he is top 2. They say Wilder is top 2 yet resume for resume how is Wilder any better than Charles Martin? Cuz he beat Luis Ortiz who has achieved what exactly himself?

I won't argue anybody who feels ppl are overeating Joshua but when they refuse to acknowledge his accolades and achievements to date they are just being salty haters who just bubble at the FACTS that prove he is doing plenty.

Most of them are dumb ass Wilder fans who know Wilder "gambled on himself" and not only lost but came out looking like a massive moron.

[NEETzschean]

He was better as an aggressive boxer-puncher than his style he adopted since winning the title.

He doesn't have the footspeed Wlad had nor the same quality jab, so what he's doing now is a sort of slightly budget version of Wlad, it works against most guys but it won't work at the top.

I belive his style should have been one that complimented his strengths, he should have been learning from early how to operate in the pocket and how to have an active defence, but they went the other way and imo its too late in the day for a total overhaul.

Put it this way when you are the size of AJ with the power he has, you shouldn't be running, why would you avoid contact, you should be the hammer. Instead of fixing his leaky defence up close they turned him into an outside boxer who is trying to avoid violence. When you seem him running from Kubrat Pulev who he could have Ko'd whenever he felt like it, it's ridiculous.

Yeah just feel he's been taken down the wrong path.

Good points. I believe AJ's move away from an aggressive style has a lot to do with his lack of confidence in his chin and gas tank. Wlad is an apt comparison but it will never work for AJ because 41 year old, 18 month inactive, defeated Wlad fighting away was still able to outbox 27 year old AJ for most of the fight. AJ only had Wlad in trouble when he took the fight to him. Fury on the other hand comfortably outboxed a better version of Wlad who also had institutional advantages.

AJ's explosiveness, his power punching style and over-muscled physique take a severe toll on his stamina and that's aside from his problems with handling pressure. He managed to get Wlad down in the 4th but gassed badly and was an inch away from being finished himself. More recently he had Pulev down twice in the 3rd and on the brink of being KO'd but AJ had to take 3 rounds off before picking up his workrate again, during which he allowed the featherfisted Bulgarian OAP back into the fight. Wlad was also a master of tying his smaller opponents up but AJ was getting headlocked by Pulev. I can't see AJ's stamina being any better now that he's 31. The problem is that if AJ keeps the muscle off then Fury will be able to impose his size advantage on AJ in the clinch, hurt him, knock him down and intimidate him more easily, whereas if AJ packs on the muscle like he did against Wlad and Takam he will be slower, more rigid and gas more quickly, at least in a less physical fight.

[NEETzschean]

OK if that makes you feel good keep running with that but again the Lack of Knowledge when it comes to History shows. Lennox ERA was much tougher than AJ's current ERA as well...again GOOGLE, go look back who was in Lennox ERA and who was Champions while he was working his way up 1995-1997 it was Champions like Rid**** Bowe (by the way who ducked Lennox) and Evander Holyfield...it wasn't any Charles Martin type of Champions back then in that ERA. Take it from someone who was actually WATCHING Boxing even Back Then!

Aside from anything else, the best 10 heavyweights of the 90's were considerably shorter and lighter than the best 10 are today, just as heavyweights in the 90's were considerably taller and heavier than those in the 70's. Technology and sports science have improved considerably, which is why track and field records in athletics keep getting broken. I see no reason why a highly lucrative sport like boxing would be immune from these trends. The world population is also much larger today and there are no political walls which prevent half of the world from competing, as was the case in the 70's and to a lesser extent in the 90's.

As for Charles Martin type champions in the 90's, there were quite a few: Francisco Damiani, Buster Douglas, Michael Bentt, Bruce Seldon and arguably a few others. You get weak champions in every era, if anything fewer today than in the past.

[NEETzschean]

Ray Mercer makes light work of the majority of AJ's resume.

Of course, the first 14 of AJ's opponents were cans. But on the other hand prime Mercer went life and death with several journeymen, so maybe not.

[MikeyMike100]

OK if that makes you feel good keep running with that but again the Lack of Knowledge when it comes to History shows. Lennox ERA was much tougher than AJ's current ERA as well...again GOOGLE, go look back who was in Lennox ERA and who was Champions while he was working his way up 1995-1997 it was Champions like Rid**** Bowe (by the way who ducked Lennox) and Evander Holyfield...it wasn't any Charles Martin type of Champions back then in that ERA. Take it from someone who was actually WATCHING Boxing even Back Then!

Nice that you named 2 fighters (Rid**** Bowe, and Evander Holyfield) who Lennox didn't fight pre 97. And yes, Rid**** Bowe chose not to fight Lennox Lewis in 1993 but they agreed to fight in 1994 as long as Lennox Lewis beat Oliver McCall. Who of course knocked out Lennox Lewis.

[MikeyMike100]

Well the haters can hate and choose to pretend he is irrelevant or hasnt achieved or proven anything but FACTS are FACTS.

They say he is manufactured but he sits on top of the division. They say he hasn't faced the top 2 yet he is top 2. They say Wilder is top 2 yet resume for resume how is Wilder any better than Charles Martin? Cuz he beat Luis Ortiz who has achieved what exactly himself?

I won't argue anybody who feels ppl are overeating Joshua but when they refuse to acknowledge his accolades and achievements to date they are just being salty haters who just bubble at the FACTS that prove he is doing plenty.

Most of them are dumb ass Wilder fans who know Wilder "gambled on himself" and not only lost but came out looking like a massive moron.

I agree with most of what you said but the part about Deontay Wilder isnt clearly better than Charles Martin.

[NEETzschean]

With all these technological advances how come most heavyweights are out of shape? It is only really Joshua and a few others who are solid as super heavyweights. Most of the super-heavyweights these days are only super heavyweights in number 'How many of them are solid at the weight'. Tyson Fury is 280 pounds, because he does not want to train the way he did when he was with Peter Fury. This illusion that the division is full of giant genetically gifted super heavyweights is all nonsense, they are big in number 'Only a hand full are genuine super heavyweights'.

In past heavyweight era's there was not a culture of body building, that is how I know 'Those fighters were solid genuine heavyweights'. Dillian Whyte for example has pumped himself up over 240-250 pounds, and it is the same with Anthony Joshua.

Frank Bruno was at his absolute peak vs Lennox Lewis, awesome jab and he was well drilled in the fundamentals and could hit hard. Bruno beats most of the top fighters today, for the simple fact he could box.

Today's era is competitive and I like it, but I think you are duped a bit by the illusion these fighters are creating.

You are mistaking a low body fat percentage for effectiveness: https://www.boxingscene.com/forums/b...-fat-in-boxing

One reason why heavyweights often pack on a bit of fat is because it has excellent shock absorption and makes you harder to knock down. We see many chubby and fat athletes in sumo, judo, mma and boxing because it confers advantages for certain styles. Fighters in the lower weight classes are no less ripped today than in the past, in fact they are far more muscular. At heavyweight there is no weight limit, so carrying protective layers of fat can be a very smart choice. How effective would natural middleweights James Toney and Jared Cannonier (mma) have been at heavyweight if they weren't fat? Buster Mathis moved very quickly for a fat man at 300 lbs and beat 200 lbs Frazier twice but he saw far less success when he started wildly fluctuating in weight and cutting down as low as 220 lbs. Mohammed Ali packed on some fat in the 70's because he believed it improved his punch resistance, whereas 200 lbs athletic Ken Norton aka "The black Hercules" got KO'd within two rounds by every power puncher he ever faced. Whyte is not a naturally big heavyweight, only 6'2 with a 78 inch reach, the same as Mohammed Ali. AJ is bigger at 6'6 with an 82 inch reach, even without the weightlifting he'd still be a genuine heavyweight. In the Olympics he was 225 lbs, which is much closer to his natural weight. Fury was 273 lbs in his last fight and not 254 lbs like the Wallin fight because he has a coach who understands the advantages of weight now and his body is mature at 32 years old; he's a natural 275 lbs man. As for super-heavyweights, there is Fury, AJ, Joyce, Hrgovic, Yoka, Makhmudov and Wallin, all at least 6.5.5 and 240 lbs, the same size or bigger than the biggest heavyweights in the 90's. Even the outlier Usyk is 6'3 and 217 lbs, the same dimensions of "big George" in the first Frazier fight. Bruno didn't even beat most of the top heavyweights in his own era: he lost 5/6 times he stepped up in class and only scored a win over a very limited fringe contender in Oliver McCall. Bruno was too stiff, immobile, chinny and prone to gassing to be any kind of threat today and he wouldn't even be particularly long or heavy anymore.

I would argue that people have always said that the previous era was better (Jack Johnson for example claimed that Louis' era was terrible and that all of the top guys from his day would beat him) and this has only been amplified by the nostalgia, wishful thinking and resentment of the American boxing media, who haven't had a great heavyweight champion in donkey's years.

[NEETzschean]

I agree with most of what you said but the part about Deontay Wilder isnt clearly better than Charles Martin.

Wilder gets beaten-up and stopped by an elite champion and suddenly he's a bum lmao, imagine what these same guys would have said about Lewis after he was destroyed in one punch by fringe contenders McCall or Rahman! Yes Wilder was protected but he still beat Ortiz (who'd KO'd Jennings in 7 rounds 2 years prior, was a 6'3, 240 lbs undefeated skilled southpaw) and Stiverne in his prime on the backfoot, who is arguably no worse than Chisora or Ruiz. Wilder also KO'd 40-odd opponents (1/4 of which were not cans, though to put it in some perspective only 1/3 of AJ's opponents were not cans, though he did step up much faster) and literally every man he ever faced until he got to Fury. Wilder had many attributes in his favour: 6'7, 83' reach, insane explosiveness and power, great athleticism, fear factor, delusional confidence, an unorthodox style, considerable heart, tenacity and a decent chin. This is why Manny Steward predicted he would become a heavyweight champion. In the period between Wlad's retirement and Fury's comeback, Wilder was a top 2 heavyweight.

[sicko]

Nice that you named 2 fighters (Rid**** Bowe, and Evander Holyfield) who Lennox didn't fight pre 97. And yes, Rid**** Bowe chose not to fight Lennox Lewis in 1993 but they agreed to fight in 1994 as long as Lennox Lewis beat Oliver McCall. Who of course knocked out Lennox Lewis.

Those 2 Names was Champions while Lennox was a rising contender, again lack of knowledge exposed again, you want to argue and debate ERAS and History but you're living in the NOW and it is very clear you're ignorant to history